Tricks to save the malicious novel

When the novel leans on a resonant and heavy narrative discourse, or proceeds from it, so that the purpose for which the writing came seems very important;

The chances of work falling into the traps of declarative and article or apathy and boredom in the best of circumstances increase.

Here, there is a need to be aware of the tricks needed to save the novel from failure while preserving its discourse.

The discourse here is about high-pitched discourse. Otherwise, every narration has its own discourse, no matter how faint or hidden, even those whose owners claim that there is no message underlying their actions, because the absence of a message is in itself a message in a way.

A topic such as immigration did not appear in its familiar form, which is filled with news bulletins of crossing and infiltrating borders to escape wars and famines, but its heroes were middle-class people, whose countries were not good enough, so they obtained a visa and left to begin their real suffering after arrival.

This came to my mind as soon as I finished reading the novel “Americana” by the famous Nigerian novelist Chimamenda Ngozi Adichie, whose Arabic version was recently released by a novel of about 560 pages, with a Syrian translation by Buthaina Al-Ibrahim.

In all of her works, Chimamenda, in my opinion, proceeds from a very clear and heavy narrative discourse, but in return she possesses a powerful skill and multiple tricks to save her texts from failure, as is the case in the novel "Americana" that is full of issues and obsessions brought from the worlds of politics, economics, history and culture. Such as the problem of immigration, racism, corruption of the ruling class, the relationship of the North to the South, poverty and feminism, to the last issues that the work dealt with in terms of varying interest and space.

The first of those tricks that dissolved “issues” in the river of narratives is to intensify the human condition, and to talk about the individual and his small details instead of invoking the crowds. A topic such as immigration did not appear in its familiar form, which is filled with news bulletins of crossing and infiltrating the borders to escape wars and famines. Rather, its heroes were middle-class people, whose countries were not good enough, so they obtained a visa and left to begin their real suffering after arrival. It is a low-sounding suffering that does not draw the attention of passersby around them, but it was enough to bring them back to ground zero, spiritually and materially. Here we are approaching the tragedy of living in another's country, with all that it takes in terms of brooding, ambition, and even anger.

In the case of racism against blacks, and because the novelist needed to go further and call things by their names, she resorted to the trick of the blog owned by the main character, which monitors the condition of blacks in America. This made all direct speech, judgments, and statistics acceptable and embodied in the body of the narrative as long as they appear in the code and are thus part of the story rather than an alienating one. Here it was necessary for the ruse to succeed that the blog appeared real in all its details, which Chimamenda excelled at; The reader would even find a line in front of him asking him to click on the link at the top of the page, in addition to the blogging language keeping a distance from the dominant narrative language.

And because the subject is not right to be dealt with and judged from a deficient point of view, the novelist has carefully chosen her characters, as multiple groups of the same society attend. This ploy would have failed if the presence seemed unnatural or pretentious, or if the characters lacked their own voice to pass on the writer's ideas. Chimamenda was also attentive to a character's refined and wise sentences, and she hurries to follow them sarcastically, returning her to the narration path, and even making her add to him instead of deduction from him in her own case.

And the novelist raised the status of the love story along the work in order to moisturize and alleviate the "issues" addressed.

This exaltation was not only in terms of space, but also included style.

The love story was not so trite that it would become a burden on the text, but rather its details covered a thin layer of confusion, confusion and even boredom and characterized the behavior of the characters towards each other. Narration is not in his heart.

It was remarkable that Chimamenda resorted to nice narrative “accessories”, if the description is correct. Throughout the text, for example, she brings up the hairstyle that shortens and denotes the race, the short curly hair when its owner seeks in every way to make it look smooth, explains a lot of knots and confusion with a few words.

There is another trick that the novelist may have resorted to, but I was confused about its feasibility;

It has no direct relationship to the narration as it relates to other accounts, for as much as Chimamenda was bold in her subject when she mentioned presidents and officials in satirical contexts, her criticism of all is softened by this, everyone is condemned;

The black and white American, responsible in the North and his counterpart in the South, the poor as much as the rich.

It is true that she did it cleverly, but it is an act that some may see as holding the stick from its middle, and a softening of the way in which the reader may receive the work in more than one place at the same time.

All these and other tricks take place with the complicity of the reader, who accepts them as long as they are firm and convincing.

It's like the actors' movement on stage, the more we know they're playing roles the more we turn a blind eye and enjoy the high performance.

Finally, it is important to commend Dar Rawat's approach to translating African literature, which has recently published several important publications in this regard.